Army Doctors Told to Expect Casualties of 10% in First 30 Days for Combat Units : Offensive: The prediction would apply only to forward-based forces, they are told. ‘We’ll have some jumping to do when it all starts,’ one says.

American commanders have warned Army doctors that some front-line U.S. combat units can be expected to suffer casualties of 10% over 30 days under current plans for a ground offensive against Iraq, according to officers familiar with the official estimate.

The prediction of battle losses remains tentative, the officers stressed, and applies only to the forward-based forces who would be expected to break through Iraqi border defenses or drive farther into enemy-held territory and thus face the brunt of Iraq’s resistance.

But doctors at a forward-based medical unit that would provide early treatment for some of these soldiers say they have spent much of the last week unloading emergency supplies, including morphine and casualty blankets, that have been delivered to the unit in preparation for what most say they believe will be a bloody battle.

“We’ll have some jumping to do when it all starts,” said Maj. Paul Whittaker, commander of a medical support company in the 1st Armored Division that would operate within artillery range of enemy forces if the allied forces were to launch an attack.

“We get a lot of classes on trauma, trauma, trauma,” said Spec. Russell Page, a 21-year-old from Greenwood, Miss., who is a medic in the unit. “They say: ‘Expect a lot of blood.’ ”

With the supplies still pouring northward and the unit fully manned, officers in the medical company said they now feel that they are amply stocked for combat.

“War’s not pretty,” said Chief Warrant Officer William Gleason, a physician’s assistant who would maneuver on the battlefield in an armored ambulance, “but really, I think we’ll be up to snuff.”

Indeed, so vast has the stockpile become that some in the unit, which serves an entire brigade, said they are convinced that preparation has turned to overkill. But Sgt. Dan Penkoff of Irvine, Calif., added after a moment’s afterthought: “I guess in war you can never have too much.”

With this heavy armored division still preparing for combat from an assembly area a comfortable distance from the front, the pace at the hospital unit Saturday remained that of a lazy afternoon, with empty armored ambulances parked in a wagon-wheel formation around the camp and soldiers heading off for a religious service before lunch.

The few technicians hard at work were analyzing vials of urine to test for pregnancy--part of what doctors said had been a slew of such submissions from women soldiers recently arrived in Saudi Arabia. The doctors noted pointedly that a well-advertised policy excuses pregnant soldiers from duty in combat zones.

But in war, officers said, the seven doctors could be expected to handle as many as 60 patients in a two-hour period, each of them rushed directly from the battlefield or from emergency aid stations closer to the front.

Moving forward as the armored brigade advanced, the medical company would seek to stabilize the conditions of the most severely wounded before sending them by helicopter to field hospitals farther to the rear, doctors said. Those only slightly wounded would be patched up and--”so long as a soldier tells me he still knows how to shoot his gun,” one doctor said--dispatched back to the front.

In describing what they imagined their work would be at the pitch of battle, the officers said they expect to see their compound in frenzy, with medics used to augment trained doctors and patients treated on tarpaulins outside tents and trauma units that might be filled to overflowing.

As caretakers to an armored unit, the officers said they expect to treat many burns--the result of tanks set afire by enemy projectiles. And with injuries from modern weapons likely to be severe, they said they had recently been reminded, as medic Page put it, “to save life instead of limb.”

For these doctors, as for most soldiers, though, combat remains an experience known only by imagination, and the one medic in the unit with extensive combat experience said Saturday that in his opinion, most of the medical staff still have “adjustments to make.”

“The doctors have to make the transition,” said Chief Warrant Officer Jim Daly, 48, of Medford, Mass., an Army medical officer for the last 28 years, who served a long tour in Vietnam. “It’s really hard. Physicians are people who have devoted their lives to taking care of each and every patient, and in war you just can’t do that. . . . “

“The first time they have to write one off--that’s going to be pretty upsetting to some of them,” Daly said.

Among the dilemmas facing doctors in any ground war here is the prospect of soldiers severely wounded while under chemical attack, leaving them in need of time-consuming decontamination before medical treatment could begin.

“The problem,” said company commander Whittaker, who is chief of ambulatory care at Wuerzburg Army Hospital in Germany, “is that when you take a breathing tube or whatever and put it through that contaminated skin, you put that nerve or mustard agent inside the person. You’re hurting them to help them.”

At the same time, with any U.S. advance likely to attempt to sweep across enemy territory as fast as possible, some doctors said they recognize that they may well encounter ambulances unloading wounded Iraqi as well as American soldiers.

“My personal feeling is that all things being equal, I would have a tendency to want to see the American soldiers treated first, when it actually comes down to it,” said Capt. Steve Blaha, a 28-year-old Army dentist from Lincoln, Neb., who will take over triage responsibilities in the unit if the ground attack begins.

But, Blaha added quickly: “Personal feelings aside, I will do whatever the Army policy is.”